Once a year, in summer, the chancellor answers journalists’ questions at the Bundespressekonferenz. In 2018 the Tagesspiegel wrote of Angela Merkel: Jedes Jahr ein Mal stellt sie sich den Fragen der Bundespressekonferenz. Once every year she faces the questions of the Bundespressekonferenz. It was at this summer press conference, on 31 August 2015, that Merkel said: Wir haben so vieles geschafft – wir schaffen das! We have managed so much. We will manage this. On 24 July 2024, Olaf Scholz answered questions for almost two hours. On 15 July 2026, Friedrich Merz held his second summer press conference.
Every Week at the Same Time
The German Choir Association alone has 13,000 choirs with about 700,000 members. At the German Choir Festival in Nuremberg in May 2025, Johannes Hasselhorn, a professor of music education at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, described a change. People are reluctant to commit to coming jede Woche zu einer bestimmten Zeit zur Chorprobe, to choir rehearsal every week at a set time. Traditional club choirs and church choirs struggle with falling membership. New formats such as pub choirs draw large crowds.
The Word for Sunday
Das Wort zum Sonntag, the Word for Sunday, runs every Saturday evening on Das Erste, usually after the late news. On 8 May 1954, the Protestant pastor Walter Dittmann from Hamburg spoke the first one. It is the second-oldest program on German television. In 1957 it moved to Sunday evening for a time and was given another name. In 1958 it returned to its old place on Saturday evening. By its 70th anniversary in 2024, more than 3,650 episodes had been broadcast.
Saturday at 3:30
Bundesliga matchdays used to kick off always on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Today four or five of the nine matches still start at that time. From the 2017–18 season, five matches a season were moved to Monday evening. Fans protested. On 19 February 2018, Eintracht Frankfurt played RB Leipzig on a Monday. Fans planned to drown out the referee’s whistle with up to 5,000 vuvuzelas, and the club expected only 32,000 spectators, although 43,000 tickets had been sold. In November 2018 the league confirmed that from the 2021–22 season no first-division match would kick off on a Monday.
Bach at the Coffeehouse
Zimmermann’s coffeehouse stood in the Katharinenstraße in Leipzig, near the market square. From 1729 Johann Sebastian Bach led the Collegium Musicum there, an ensemble that Georg Philipp Telemann had founded as a law student in 1702. Its concerts took place every week, all year round, and twice a week during Leipzig’s three trade fairs. The building was destroyed in the air raids on Leipzig in December 1943.
The Sunday Society
On 3 December 1827, a literary society was founded in Berlin under the name Sonntags-Verein zu Berlin, the Sunday Society. It became known as the Tunnel über der Spree. At its regular Sunday sessions, members presented literary works, which had to be unpublished. Each new member chose a Tunnel name. Theodor Fontane’s was Lafontaine. The verdicts on a text knew only four grades: sehr gut, gut, schlecht and verfehlt, very good, good, bad and missed. The last record of a session is dated 30 October 1898.
Fridays at Helmut Schmidt’s
In 1985 the former chancellor Helmut Schmidt founded a Freitagsgesellschaft, a Friday Society, in Hamburg. Its 25 members met during the winter semesters, on the second Friday of each month, at Schmidt’s house in Hamburg-Langenhorn. Each evening had a lecture followed by a discussion. Party membership did not matter. Until her death, his wife Loki Schmidt took care of the guests’ dinner herself. Over 175 lectures were held. The society was dissolved at the end of the winter semester 2014–15. Schmidt gave up the role of host for reasons of age, and no successor could be found.
The Wednesday Society
The Berlin Mittwochsgesellschaft, the Wednesday Society, was officially founded on 19 January 1863. It called itself a freie Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Unterhaltung, a free society for scholarly conversation. It had 16 members, at most 17, each a leading expert in his field, and it met every second Wednesday. Each member invited the others to his home twice a year and gave a lecture, which the group then discussed. In its last years its members included Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Werner Heisenberg and Ludwig Beck. After the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944, Beck was shot on 21 July without trial. The society’s last session, the 1,056th, took place on Wednesday 26 July 1944, at the home of Paul Fechter.
Too Many Meetings
In February 2025, the market research firm bilendi surveyed 1,040 employees in Germany for the HR software company HR Works. On average, they had 4.4 meetings a week and considered 2.9 of them unnecessary. They spent 4.7 hours a week in meetings and considered 3.2 of those hours wasted. 48 percent said that meetings take too long. 31 percent said that such meetings produce no concrete decisions.
Stammtisch
der Stammtisch — the regulars’ table. The same group meets at the same pub on a regular day. Duden defines it as a table in a restaurant where a circle of regulars meets regularly, and which is usually reserved for them. Traditionally, a sign on the table marks the reservation. The word also has a dismissive use. Stammtischpolitik, Stammtisch politics, means simplified political talk.